Agony is but a name
by Violentcitizen
Summary: The Torn World has been called many things. But only once has it been called home.


"To fear something is to know it, but not enough to love it."

Dawn's first day in hell is when she learned fear, and then forgot it again.

She huddled in the extreme cold for hours, and when it turned to unbearable heat, she took off her scarf and jacket and lay in the twisting rock. She screamed in agony as she felt her bones bend and snap unexpectedly, and felt them mend instantaneously. She learned fear by awaiting her death, awaiting when her neck would shatter, and then regrow, this time without any mind to support.

But the true fear came from hope, for because hope there is no true fear, no fear besides the human fear of death. She hoped to see the shape of a human figure again, the shape of anything beyond herself and the unforgiving landscape.

She felt phantom pains for limbs she never had, began seeing hallucinations which disappeared as soon as they appeared. Her thinking began to accelerate to impossible levels, which soon became absence of all emotion, then to fear. She cried out words she did not know the meaning of, in languages she had never heard before. She saw in sounds and thought in boxes, sorting oranges into equations, and when she was coherent again, she had forgotten what she was afraid of.

The second day was when she forgot.

The third day is when she lost hope.

The fourth day is when she tried to escape, jumping off spires of rock but never hitting the bottom. She cut her wrists with jagged stone. She learned that the torn world had no death.

The fifth day she cried.

The sixth, seventh, and eighth days she accepted her fate. She wandered the land, trying to figure out where she was. But no answers came to her, only the voices of those she failed and had yet to fail.  
These are not days, but weeks. In the Lost World, there is no time.

* * *

"Death is the not the only thing we fear. But it is the only thing that is worth fearing."  
-

Cynthia feared the distortion world.

She feared going back, back to the place where life had no meaning and where the laws of the universe dared not reach. But she thought of the child, alone and scared, and she stepped into the Torn world once more.

What she found there was nothing more than what she found the first time.  
There was a girl, but the girl was no one. She looked at Cynthia with empty eyes.  
"Dawn..?"  
The girl blinks, and opens her mouth to speak.

* * *

She opens her empty eyes again. She sees only white and black. But in those two colours and the shades in between, she sees everything.

She is home no longer. She searches her memories for this place, but they have faded away, shallow grooves in her memory worn away by insanity.

The woman she saw before is seated next to her bed. Their eyes meet. In hers is recognition. In Dawn's there is nothing.

"Dawn..."The woman starts,"I-I'm sorry."  
Cynthia. A picture, in full color, pops up in Dawn's memory. But the expression is different now. She had a name for the emotion once, before. Ah, she remembers it now. Sadness.

She says nothing.

Cynthia leaves her alone in the room. The pain had died down, but she would not care if it hadn't. She sat up, and attempted to get to her feet, failing as she stumbled into a table and fell to the floor, shattering glass vases and jars, the shards of which pierced her skin.

She smiled. She saw the red of blood just fine.

* * *

Cynthia steps into the room. She is holding a bouquet in her left arm, with a small box in the other. She walks to Dawn's bed, and repeats."I'm sorry."  
"They-they didn't make it."  
She opens the box. There is a single pokeball inside. She sees red there as well.  
"But your egg hatched."  
Dawn says nothing at first. Then she echoes the names of those who have passed, absently and carefree.  
Cynthia turns away.

* * *

She hates red now. She has shattered the sphere. The piplup within is afraid of her now. The doctors are worried. They fear her.  
"I'm afraid she needs help. Psychiatric help. I can recommend a good Alakazam psychotherapist who's in Florama, or- what age was she?-There is a Gardevoir who treats children specially."

* * *

She is released after one week of hospitalization. She goes to many people and pokemon. Psychics attempt to read her emotion, but there is nothing there. They cannot hope to understand her, what she has become. She fears only death now, only cares for what will always be there when she goes home. Her real home. Hell. Home is where you are moulded, the only place you think you belong.  
She looks at the world. There is only grey, black and white. She remembers the vibrant purples, greens, and yellows, dreary greys and browns, and red. The link between two worlds. The only thing that truly belongs in one, but is found in the other.

Her name is Dawn, but she is not the shining gaze of the sun. She is not the blue of sky, nor is she the green of the grass illuminated by the rays of light. She is red. -  
She wears a mask. She calls it Dawn.  
Dawn trains her only pokemon. She captures more. She trains them, and she challenges the only person left to challenge.  
She defeats Cynthia's dragon, and there is nothing standing in her way. The former champion sees her at the end. She tells her how Dawn got past her pain, her hysteria, and emerged victorious. She tells her how proud of her she is. Dawn's mask wears a smile.

* * *

She climbs Mt. Silver to meet the boy who stole her name. He stands silent, his white and black pikachu growling at her. She asks him about hell.  
Finally, he speaks with a voice that was hoarse, as if the cobwebs choking it had not yet been removed.  
"I have not been to hell, but I have met the devil."  
He tells her of the abomination that scared his voice out of him, the reality- distorting creature he encountered in cinnabar. She tells him of Giratina.  
Se speaks to him passionately about the dragon's beautiful golden scales, scales she could no longer care about. She tells him of the red eyes of the devil, the true devil, not the shallow pretender Missingno.  
Then she pushes him. Pikachu grabs its trainer before he could plummet to death, but Empoleon throws the rodent and its master down into the abyss.

He realizes what he has done, looks at his trainer one last time, and leaves, never to be seen again.  
Dawn counts. A father and his son have both left her. Six.  
She does not count herself.

* * *

She sees Giratina the last time. He comes to meet her.  
She touches him, and she feels death. She still fears it, so she recoils.  
He looks at her. His crimson eyes reflect her own.  
"I have come to take you away. You have devoted yourself to me, and you are mine."  
The she smiles. "You do not understand, Death. You are mine."  
She pulls out a Pokeball. He is not afraid. He merely laughs.  
She pushes the button, and Death is hers.  
She takes a hammer, and smashes the Master ball to pieces, taking care to let nothing escape.  
She laughs again, not the triumphant laugh of one who has conquered death, but the cry of a little girl, alone and scared.


End file.
